Ilfoie is Fun!

Ilfoie was added as a new Tech during the March 5th content update. This tech has proven to be fun for a number of unexpected reasons.

Mechanics

This section will explain the mechanics of the tech for those who haven’t tried it as of yet. It roots the caster in place, highlighting an area as the target of the attack. After a certain amount of time has passed, the target ring will change shape, indicating that it’s fully charged. Release the button and a few moments later a great big flaming meteor will come crashing down. It’s dramatic and really quite cool looking!

In terms of practicality, you may want to invest fully into Flame Tech S Charge to bring the charge time down to a reasonable amount. Without this, your character may be stuck standing still for an uncomfortably long time, which isn’t really preferable for something squishy like a Force. The tech is entirely worthless against any enemy that isn’t immobilized, sluggish, or otherwise not going anywhere fast. Else it’s very easy to end up whiffing the tech simply because the enemy decided to move 2 feet.

While the damage is impressive, the fact you’re rooted and it takes so long to charge combined with its tendency to miss anything that moves really makes the damage feel somewhat inadequate, at least for me. Kind of a pity for a tech as cool looking as Ilfoie is.

Uncharged

Ilfoie does a fairly large portion of its damage when uncharged, as opposed to numerous techs which do typically less than 50% of their damage when charged (with the exceptions of Sazan, Sazonde and possibly others).

Of course the only weapon that can really take full advantage of uncharged Ilfoie is Elysion, whose latent ability doubles the power of uncharged Techs. While it is an impressive way to quickly deal a large amount of damage to a single target it will still cost a hefty 50 pp per cast, so you’ll drain your bar extremely quickly this way.

Magical Words!

Taking a look at the casting ring, some players noticed that there was writing on them.

Players with a lot more patience than myself managed to decipher enough of the text to work out that the source is the nonsense poem “Jabberwocky”, from Lewis Carrol’s novel “Through The Looking Glass”, written in PSO2’s font.

Digging into the game’s files reveals that indeed the entire poem is written out in the texture (yes it really is that low-res):

Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe:
All mimsy were ye borogoves;
And ye mome raths outgrabe.

Interestingly, along with that you may be able to see small pillars of text on its side in the above screenshot, emanating from the center of the ring heading straight up. It’s so low-res in game that I find it hard to confirm which texture it’s actually using, but there is another texture like the one above, this time Humpty Dumpty (referred to in the same book as Jabberwocky no less).

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

An appropriate poem for a space rock crashing into the ground and exploding I suppose!

Ilfoie on Partner Characters

Ilfoie seems to behave entirely differently when in the hands of a Friend Partner, an AI representation of someone on your friend list. It seems that they can entirely ignore the charging time required for it, resulting in them near-instantly summoning a fully powered meteor. If you fill up your party with nothing but Friend Partners who only have Ilfoie equipped the result is, well, dramatic.

As you can see it actually does a fairly decent amount of damage as well, given it’s coming from AI characters who generally seem to have difficulty getting into the triple digits I’ve found.

I doubt this was an intentional effect, but so far it doesn’t seem to have been acknowledged as a problem so there seem to be no plans to fix it that I’m aware of. Enjoy the time of Friend Partners doing somewhat competent damage while it lasts, at least!